Smart Card Readers
- See also: Contact smart card and Contactless smart card.
A smart card reader is an electronic device that reads smart cards and can be found in the following forms:
- Some keyboards have a built-in card reader.
- External devices and internal drive bay card reader devices exist for personal computers (PC).
- Some laptop models contain a built-in smart card reader and/or utilize flash upgradeable firmware.
External devices that can read a Personal identification number (PIN) or other information may also be connected to a keyboard (usually called "card readers with PIN pad"). This model works by supplying the integrated circuit on the smart card with electricity and communicating via protocols, thereby enabling the user to read and write to a fixed address on the card.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| T=0 | Asynchronous half-duplex byte-level transmission protocol, defined in ISO/IEC 7816-3 |
| T=1 | Asynchronous half-duplex block-level transmission protocol, defined in ISO/IEC 7816-3. |
| T=2 | Reserved for future use. |
| T=3 | Reserved for future use. |
| Contactless | APDU transmission via contactless interface ISO/IEC 14443. |
If the card does not use any standard transmission protocol, but uses a custom/proprietary protocol, it has the communication protocol designation T=14.
The latest PC/SC CCID specifications define a new smart card framework. This framework works with USB devices with the specific device class 0x0B. Readers with this class do not need device drivers when used with PC/SC-compliant operating systems, because the operating system supplies the driver by default.
PKCS#11 is an API designed to be platform-independent, defining a generic interface to cryptographic tokens such as smart cards. This allows applications to work without knowledge of the reader details.
Read more about this topic: Card Reader
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